Kitchen Composition

Cooking is a lot like songwriting - Start with a few ingredients, a little inspirationand attempt to put them together in a way that's unique and satisfying.

Yesterday I came home itching to cook something wonderful for dinner -- and I found virtually nothing exciting in my pantry or refrigerator. But sometimes you must plow ahead using whatever turns up. What turned up was: a couple onions, a Granny Smith apple and a few slices of bacon. Bingo. I decided to create an Onion Apple Tart. It was inspired.

Onion Apple Tart

Your favorite pizza dough recipe (If you don't have one already, this one from The Pioneer Woman is good: Pizza dough)

3 slices on bacon, chopped
2 onions, sliced

a little olive oil

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped in 1/2 inch pieces

1/2 cup of heavy cream

1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (or use your favorite cheese)

kosher salt

fresh cracked black pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Cook the bacon til it's brown and then use a paper towel to sop up most of the grease in the pan. Pour a little olive oil in with the bacon and saute the onions in the same pan. When the onions are soft, put the apples in the pan and saute til the apples soften.

Pour the cream into the pan and cook on low until most of the liquid evaporates. Let the filling cool while you roll out the pizza dough.

Roll the dough out - I use an insulated cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. I rub a bit of olive oil on the paper before I spread the dough out. Pile the topping on the dough. Sprinkle with kosher salt, black pepper, and Parmesan cheese.

Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes - or until the crust is nicely brown and cheese is melted exactly to your liking.

When it comes out, it will look something like this:

We enjoyed it with a 2005 Ravenswood Syrah from the Grocery Outlet. Wonderful meal - and loads easier than writing a hit song.

Bacon Experimentation: 3 out of 4

Bacon with bananas and tabasco: Yes!

Bacon with rumaki - (marinated chicken liver and water chestnuts): Yes!

Bacon with pinto beans, overnight in the crockpot: Yes!

Bacon in Chocolate Chip Cookies: Disturbing

I tried - really, I did. I was excited about Bacon for Dessert. George Clooney himself - possibly the sexiest man on earth -- raved about a bacon chocolate bar. So I did it for George.

I made a huge batch of my award-winning cookie dough, only to discover that a large handful of crispy bacon bits did not improve them in the least.

Sorry, George.

Here's the cookie recipe. You can add bacon - but I don't recommend it:

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

2/3 Cup butter
2/3 Cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teas vanilla
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
3 bars (3 oz each) good quality dark, sweet chocolate (I like Lindt), broken into ½ inch pieces
2/3 cup chopped pecans


Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, beat butter, sugars, egg and vanilla at medium speed until fluffy. On low speed, beat in flour, just until mixed. Stir in chocolate and nuts.

Refrigerate the dough. Form into balls with an ice cream scoop, and place on parchment. Bake one sheet at a time, for about 17 minutes. Do not over bake – cookies should be lightly browned and tops almost dry.

Enjoy.

The #1 reason I'm not a vegetarian

1. BACON

Yes, I'm aware that it's nothing but salty fat dripping in horrific chemicals.

But my-oh-my, what a fine way to dress up those carcinogens. In our not-even-close-to-kosher home, we are all big bacon fans.

That's why I was drooling over TIME magazine this week -- reading out loud a story on bacon making its way onto the dessert menu. Those long, dismal hours between dinner and breakfast no longer have to be "bacon-free." You can have your cake and bacon, too.

Goodies like Maple Syrup Pudding with Bacon and Bacon Chocolate Bars. I am intrigued. And salivating. There will be Bacon Experimentation at our house this weekend.

Here's a recipe for an hors d'oeuvres that was a favorite of ours years ago -- back before kids -- when we led a shallow existence and spent our weekends organizing dinner parties, wine tasting and leafing through gourmet magazines.

These are salty, spicy, sweet, delectable morsels - we served them before dinner, but they could easily do double-duty as dessert.

Yeah, it makes a big old mess in your oven -- but what a way to go.

Bananas in Bacon

Slice a couple of firm bananas (yellow, but not mushy) into 1/2 inch slices. Place a drop or two or three of Tabasco Sauce on each slice and wrap each banana piece in a half-strip of uncooked bacon. Secure it with a toothpick. Broil them til the bacon is cooked -- you may need to turn them halfway through cooking, but watch carefully -- try not to set the kitchen on fire.

Here's Joel Stein's article in Time

And a few Bacon-for-Dessert recipes. Enjoy.